The Financial Services Authority has just published the results of a giant survey of people's financial affairs. According to media reports, it has determined that the nation's young folk, in particular, are as stupid as hairballs. I would, in the normal run of things, be the first to agree with a survey that reaches such a pleasingly unPollyanna-ish conclusion, but when it comes to matters fiscal I feel I must protest - although still not vigorously - against authority's tendency to liken anyone not actually running a successful hedge fund to a lump of particularly stupid poo.

There is, you see, a distinction to be made between classes of financially challenged individuals. One class comprises those unlucky victims of temperament, natural spenders. My best friend treats money as if it were anthrax in her purse, and rushes to convert it into, well, anything, anything else at all; while I, a natural-born saver, jacknife in pain at her profligacy.

She is the kind of person who would write in to the financial problem pages saying: "I am 30 years old, owe £47,000 to a plethora of credit agencies who are currently surrounding my house and baying like a pack of wolves round a crippled elk. I earn £12,000 a year, go on exotic holidays every three months and eat silver eggs. How can I save money and still buy the private island I have set my heart on and replace my feet with jewel-encrusted platinum prostheses?"

She is, in short, an idiot, and deserves to be named as such almost as much as I deserve to be given power of attorney over her so that I can allocate pocket money to her every week until she grows a brain. Instead of fighting their natural tendencies, she and her ilk indulge them as fully as possible at every opportunity and are, therefore, indeed as stupid as any inanimate object you care to insert here.

But there is another class, this time made up of the simply ignorant. The FSA report found that one in five people did not understand that a savings account paying 3% in interest would not keep up with an inflation rate of 5%. To which one can only reply: why should they? The only reason I - who had to be shown at university how to write a cheque - know anything at all about ISAs, mortgage types, shares or interest rates is because I was a trainee solicitor for two years and the firm sent me repeatedly on special courses (and even within them I had to have extra tuition - oh, it was the cycling proficiency test nightmare all over again, this time with taper relief questions), until eventually the scythe of understanding thinned this particular thicket of ignorance to a manageable density.

Unlike the media, however, the FSA has at last understood that the ignorant can be saved from themselves and are sending brave troops of educators into schools and offices to offer them the benefit of their wisdom. What they are going to do about the remaining imbeciles I am not sure, but I can say that I am thoroughly enjoying the power of attorney thing, and the supplementary income my friend now unwittingly provides to the Mangan household has made my own financial affairs healthier than ever. May she never grow a brain.